25. On to Greece - 1970

Hippie Van

We left Istanbul in an old beat up Volkswagen van with the owner driving.  After adding our luggage to the  back there were only six seats left.  The drivers seat, the front seat next to the driver and three in the back.  The owner did all the driving. The rest of us drew straws to see who had to sit in the front passengers seat next to the driver.  It was a drawing we did not want to win.  The heater was broken!  This would seem okay it being the middle of the summer and it being about 90*F or 32*C except for two reasons.  The first reason was that there was no air conditioning in the van.  The engine was air cooled and in this Volkswagen when the heater was broken, the heat could not be shut down.  The owner had the heater vent blocked of on his side but because the car engine was air cooled he needed the air to circulate so he did not dare cover the passenger side.  The loser had to ride in the front seat next to the heater vent!  I was lucky, I did not have to sit in the front seat until the next day! 

Our first stop was just shy of the border between Greece and Turkey.  This was intentional.  We all got out and grabbed our own backpacks and whatever we were carrying to cross the border individually.  It would probably have been different if we had known each other for a while but we had known each other for just a couple of days.  The problem was smuggling drugs across the border.  As long as we were separate it was fine and we were only responsible for ourself.  If we were together and one person was busted, we would all be charged as a group and no one wanted that.  We were at the Ipsala Turkey crossing.  It was a slow day and things went rather well.  We were done with the Turkish customs rather quickly and then went through the Greek customs which took a little longer.  The Greek customs agents took a closer look at the van and and removed a few panels in the doors and under the seats but after about thirty minutes the van was released and the owner quickly put the parts back on.  He said practice makes perfect, this had already happened to him at a few other crossings.  We had crossed the border, repacked the van,  and were on our way before noon.  Just a side note,  1n 1970 you could walk across the border at this crossing but because of illegal crossings you can no longer do it on foot.

One of the Beaches near Makri

We were back on the road and it wasn't quite noon.   We did stop and picked up some fresh fruit for our lunch while riding along the coast  between Alexandropoli and Makri.  It was a beautiful drive looking at the aquamarine sea and as we approached Makri, we could no longer resist the temptation.  We decided to stop and eat our lunch and go swimming in the Aegean sea.  We stopped along the beach and found a quiet spot well away from everyone.  The only problem we thought we had was that no one had a bathing suit and only one person had a set of shorts.  No problem, We were in Greece and they were liberal so we decided to swim nude but at the same time we made sure that we were well away from everyone else on the beach.  As it turned out, there still was a problem.  We were liberal but the mayor's sister was not, and that day she was also on the beach.  Waaay on the other end of the beach.  She must have had a walkie talkie or radio because the next thing you know there were three policeman arriving in two police cars.  They showed up with flashing lights and walked out on the beach where we were and talked to us while motioning to our clothes. We could not understand what they were saying but we put our clothes back on.  Then we were escorted back to the van  and they made it clear that we were to follow them into town.  With one police car in front of us and one behind us, they escorted us through a maze of streets to the local police station.  Once there, we were escorted into the police station and they collected our passports.  As far as we could tell, they could not speak English, German or French.  We could not speak Greek.  They did check our bags and the van for, we think, drugs and weapons.  They confiscated our weapons; a few hand knives.  The next thing that happened seemed very strange to us.

Coffee shop with Tawula Board

They escorted us next door to a small cafe or coffeehouse.  Even the girls that were traveling with us went inside the cafe.  The police kept motioning to us until we understood that we were not to leave from there.  We were fed some bread and fruit and given our choice of soda, tea or coffee and sat with the locals outside the cafe making friends with the old men that were there playing Tawula (a Turkish/Greek form of backgammon).  One policeman was always with us.  After we sat and paced and worried for almost an hour and a half a different policeman showed up.  We were escorted back into the police station.  The new officer smiled at us and spoke to us in English.  He apologized for the time we spent waiting for him.  He was doing some police work in another location and could not leave there until he was finished.  He told us that he was the only policeman in the town that spoke English.  They (the police), wanted us to know  the only problem was the mayor's sister.  We were on the beach the same time she was.  She was an old fuddy duddy.  She complained to the police and the politics in that town were such that the police had to show that action was taken and that they had done what they were supposed do.  They did realize that we had moved away from everyone and were far enough away that they were sure that she could not really tell if we were clothed or not.  They continued to tell us that if she was not on the beach that day, there would have been no problem at all.  They hoped that we enjoyed or snacks next door and said it was their treat for us being understanding.  They handed us back our passports and returned our knives telling us that they knew it was getting late but it would be easier if we went on our way before too many questions were asked.   We were more than willing to cooperate.  They then had to show us how to get out of town; once again we were on our way!

24. Still in Istanbul - 1970

Yücel Hostel about 1970

Ottoman Luxury Hotel Courtyard

Staying at the Yücel Hostel was a treat.  It was a stop in Istanbul along the Hippie Trail.  It was across the street from the Aya Sophia Mosque and around the corner of Yenner's and the Pudding Shop.  Yenners was a small restaurant that had gone to seed and was only patronized by hippies n the road or staying in the area.  It was an information exchange place where you could find where to go in any country and leave messages for your friends and read messages from your traveling friends all on notes attached to a hanging rope by clothespins.  Remember, internet did not exist in those days.  The Pudding shop was much the same, except it was cleaner and had a larger customer base covering all the traveling social castes.  Here, along with many types of scam artists and more people selling  hashish were undercover cops looking to find buyers they would either jail or blackmail.  The saving grace was that you could always get an inexpensive good and tasty meal.  Also, there was the rich almost black chocolate pudding that was talked about all along the Hippie Trail.  The backpackers who did not have any money spent their nights in a tent on top of the roof of the Gulhane Hostel.  Those with a little money stayed at the Yücel Hostel.  Very little money was needed.  In the year 2005, The Yücel Hostel was redone and became an expensive luxury boutique hotel named The Ottoman Luxury Hotel.  Above is a photo of the courtyard redesigned for the new hotel.  During  the 60's the courtyard also existed but was mostly all concrete walls with brick decks.  When you walked out of the back lobby, you were on the top deck.  This deck usually had a few people sitting around at tables reading and making plans.  The lower deck was much busier.  Across the common area was a small building with a few tables and chairs crowded inside on the right as you went in.  On the left they had a small glass food counter that held various candies for sell along with fresh fruit, cheese, and bread.  The young attendant was stationed at a small table on the immediate left as you went through the door.  On both sides of the door were large windows.  The window by the attendant was always left open to let out the smoke that he produced while using a hotplate to fry the worlds best tasting omelets.  Because of the smoke produced in the small room, most of us ordered through the window and ate at tables in the courtyard.  On the left of this building was a small L shaped room that was opened as a small lounge where all the guests went to socialize during the cold rainy season.  This was mostly in the evening when one got tired of the scene at Yenners or the Pudding Shop.

Yeni Cami (The New Mosque)

The hostel was located ideally.  It was in the old district of Istanbul (the Sultan Ahmet district).  When you walked out the front door and crossed the street you were at the beautiful Aya Sophia mosque.  Now a museum with both a strong early christian and islamic heritage.  Turn left and walk five minutes through the Gulhane Park you came to the Topkapi Palace.  If you turned right and walked up the street for five minutes past Yenner's and the Pudding Shop you arrived at the covered Grand Bazaar, a place where you could spend weeks without seeing it all and it would be worth every minute spent there.  When you came back out and continued up the street for a few minutes you came to the famous Blue Mosque.  Turn right coming out of the Yücel and then take your next right and walk down the hill you will come my favorite, The Yeni Cami (The New Mosque) and the famous covered Spice Market on the mosque grounds.

The Yücel Hostel was open 24 hours a day and was where I stayed whenever visiting Istanbul.  One would find a veritable treasure of different types of characters. The hostel was host to a wide diversity of guests from all over the world.  You could possibly meet a young group of Germans there for a couple of weeks.  You could meet an elderly group or couple there to see the sights or a young french girl that just wanted to be alone and read.  Another time it was a group of elderly and young nuns there to see all the christian sights.  One time I met a young Israeli woman that was entertaining us with her knife skills.  We later found out that she learned those skills while training in the Israeli army and she was visiting Istanbul while on leave.  Another time we met a young (American/Australian) couple traveling from Australia on an extended honeymoon.  One time there was a young naive Brit who was suffering from a case of diarrhea and would take any advice that he could get.  People were telling him to eat plenty of soft juicy fresh fruit like peaches, figs, grapes, and star fruits.  This went on for about four days until he finally realized that they were stringing him along.  On my last visit to Yücel's I met a person who had left the investment world and was writing a novel while on his travels.  He was into his second month in Istanbul because he had "writers bloc".  I think it was a case of too many of the wrong chemicals.  He was attempting to be the first person to write a novel with no characters!

Büyükada Surreys

On this last trip through Istanbul I met an older American man at Yücel's that was giving his sixteen year old daughter the trip of a lifetime after graduating from high school.  They had started the Hippie Trail in India and were traveling east back to London.  Daddy was a true Dad and no men got close to her, and she was having so much fun I do not think she noticed that the young ones flirted with her only up to a line that the father allowed.  He was ever present.  The girls father, to  provide company for his daughter, treated a small group of us to a day on the island of Büyükada in the Princes Islands.  Of course, he came along too!  After a short ferry ride, we got off the ferry and he bought us lunch at the kiosks by the landing.  The first one  offered a regular or a heavy dark bock beer on tap.  The next attached kiosk had nothing but scrumptious fresh oysters on a stick that were deep fried right there.  Then we spent the day riding all over the island in a light blue surrey with fringe on the top.  The Groom spoke English  and gave us a fantastic tour of the whole island.

The next week, I met a another traveler that had a Volkswagen van and was heading east.  I and four others decided to join him and share in the gas money.  I was on the road again and headed towards home.

23. Back to Istanbul - 1970

After visiting my friends in Yalova, it was back on the road towards the end of my journey.  Actually it was back on the ferry to Istanbul.  I recently found a poem that I had composed sometime during that time frame.

The Ferry

There is a girl
Very pretty and quite sincere.

Every week

We ride together

Her and I
Side by Side

When she sees me
She waves and smiles
And I do the same

On the last ride
She cried
As she and I left the boat

Each into our own worlds
Both speaking a different language


Missing my friends in Yalova, I found myself once again back in Istanbul. I went up and got a bed at Yucel hostel in Istanbul across the street from the Aya Sophia Mosque.  This is a place I stayed at many times. I was in the military and stationed for a few years in Turkey prior to this trip. We would go into Istanbul, get our room at the hostel, then rush over to the Hilton hotel where all the rich tourists stayed.  We would go to the restaurant and order the cheapest meal we could find on the menu, and then sit and listen to the tables around us until we located one where the patrons spoke english.  Once we located one, we would introduce ourselves telling them it was a pleasure to finally hear someone speaking english after being in Turkey so long, and could we show them around  to some of our favorite shops in the Grand Bazaar, where we knew the owners were honest, had good prices, and would not take advantage of them.  Usually It ended up being a good day showing the people parts of Istanbul they would not normally see.  At the Bazaar when the people were bargaining with the owners, we would confess to the tourist that we normally did get a percentage of their sale but that we enjoyed being with them so much that we would give up our share of the sale and that would usually be enough to seal the sale.  The tourist did feel good because they got a good deal, and they did get a good deal, the owner felt good because he made a good sale, and we would still go back to visit the owner later to get our percentage of the sale and usually have enough spending money for the rest of our visit in Istanbul .

Linda Booth 1970

Gulhane

Another time, we (a group of American military friends and I) were in Istanbul looking to visit the NCO (Non Commissioned Officers) club for dinner.  They had just changed their by-laws to allow us lower ranked individuals and our families to use the club.  The problem was that they had a dress code.  One of our friends, Linda Bradbury (now Linda Booth) was a woman and was not wearing a dress or skirt.  What did we do?  We went back outside and around the corner.  One of us men took off a tee shirt.  He had on two layers.  We surrounded Linda as she put on the large tee shirt and took off her jeans, tied a ribbon or something around her waist and we walked back in the club and were seated because Linda was now wearing a "dress"! 

Saint Anthony of Padua Church

The Saint Anthony of Padua Church is a Minor Basilica located on Istiklal Ave in the Beyoglu section of Istanbul..  This was built by the Italian community in 1725 and rebuilt and expanded around 1906-12.  Pope John XXIII was posted here from 1934-44, and said Mass in this Basilica as a priest and was appointed Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece and titular archbishop of  Mesembria, Bulgaria.  He took up his post in 1935 and used his office to help the Jewish underground in saving thousands of refugees in Europe from 1934 through the Holocaust.  The Basilica allows visitors but is still quite active locally.  Saturday Mass is in Italian, Sunday has three Masses, one in Polish, one in English and one in Turkish, weekday Masses are in English and Tuesday Late Morning Mass is in Turkish.

Rejans

Another favorite place was Rejan's restaurant that was around the corner of the Basilica at the end of an alley named Olivya Geçidi.  It was opened in 1931 by the White Russians fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution.  They were famous for their traditional Russian fare such as roast duck, chicken kiev, beef strogonof, and a fantastic borscht.

Rejans

The restaurant walls were surrounded with dark oak wainscoting five foot high and walls that went up another  fifteen feet with a balcony at one end.  The service was fantastic.  They actually had little old ladies dressed in black with white ruffled collars who prided themselves on speaking and taking your order in the language they were addressed. 

22. A short trip to Karamürsel

It is now time to start heading backup to London, but first here are some quick photos from Karamürsel.

Karamürsel

The town of Karamürsel  is just down the road east from Karamürsel Hava İstasyonu (Karamursel Air Station).  It is also on the coast of the Maramara Sea. 

I never spent much time in Karamürsel.  It was a much smaller version of Yalova, but the American families that lived there loved it.

21. Followup on Yalova

I have been blessed by God.  I mentioned in a previous post that I had lost all contact with my friends in Yalova.  That has been corrected with a stroke of luck. I laughed with glee at renewing contact with some precious old friends.  It has been forty three years since I have seen them and it is pleasing to me that they are still my friends and that they still consider me their friend.

Clockwise are Selma, Belma, Süheyla, and Layla with their Mom

It also tells me that Yalova was not destroyed as I thought.  Part of the original still exists in the people that lived and still live there. Here are five of the people that I remember.  Their mother, Fahriye, is the person I talked about in my last post.

The four sisters going clockwise surrounding Fahriye are Selma, Belma, Süheyla, and Layla.  

FÜZEN ART Gallery

Selma and Süheyla

 

Layla passed on in 2004 and her husband Nurdogan in 1990.

They had two children.
The eldest, Volkan, has two children, one is a student at the university and the second is in high school.  They live in Istanbul where he has an art gallery named The Füzen Art Gallery.
 Layla's daughter Elvan has one son studying at the Unıversity of Nottingham in England. 

Süheyla still lives in Yalova.  Her Husband died in 1990.  She has two sons that are married

Selma has 2 sons and two grandchildren.  She and her husband live in the resort city of Marmaris in southern Turkey bordering on the Mediterranean sea.  They spend the winter living in Yalova.  One son lives in Germany with his family and the other in Istanbul.

Belma also lives in the city of Marmaris.


 I find it interesting how some things remain in our minds.  The friends we have not seen for 43 years have not aged. We still think of them as they were, not as Grandparents with a few well earned wrinkles.

 Selma and Granddaughter